Category: internet

The Swedish music streaming company Spotify made two big moves into podcasting this week, buying podcast publisher Gimlet Media and podcasting recording app company Anchor.Superficially, the acquisitions make no sense. After all, there’s no money in podcasting, right? The entire U.S. podcasting industry made only $314 million in advertising revenue in 2017.Yet Spotify’s acquisitions are part of a $500 million buying spree in the podcasting space promised by the company for this year.Gimlet raised about $28.5 million in venture funding and was valued at around $70 million, yet Spotify reportedly paid around $230 million for it. (Anchor raised about $14.4 million, and its purchase price at press time was unknown.)To read this article in full, please click here

Original URL: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3339656/mobile-wireless/suddenly-podcasting-becomes-a-sound-business.html#tk.rss_all

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Mozilla today released Firefox 65 for Windows, macOS and Linux and called out new user controls for setting the desired level of anti-ad tracking by the browser.Developers also patched seven vulnerabilities, three tagged as “Critical,” Mozilla’s highest threat ranking. “This results in the stream parser object being freed while still in use, leading to a potentially exploitable crash,” Mozilla said, referring to a “use-after-free” bug in the browser.Firefox 65, which can be downloaded from Mozilla’s site, updates in the background, so most users need only relaunch the browser to get the latest version. To manually update, pull up the menu under the three horizontal bars at the upper right, then click the help icon (the question mark within a circle). Choose “About Firefox.” The resulting page shows that the browser is either up to date or explains the refresh process.To read this article in full, please click here

Original URL: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3251749/web-browsers/whats-in-the-latest-firefox-update-mozilla-revamps-ad-tracker-blocking-controls.html#tk.rss_all

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Pingdom, a popular website monitoring and performance management service, will soon stop welcoming non-paying users. In an email sent to users today, Pingdom announced that it will be ending its free tier on February 6. From a report: The move, which has unsurprisingly upset many users, comes five years after Pingdom was acquired by SolarWinds, an Austin, Texas-based firm. In its email, Pingdom said it intends to focus its resources and investment on the next phase of its product development. Founded in 2007, Pingdom attracted over 500,000 users from 200 countries in seven years, before it was acquired. Several major companies, including Google, Spotify, Microsoft, Twitter, Slack, Evernote, Mailchimp, Github, Square, Instagram, and others became its clients.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/pI1mInrHgCs/pingdom-will-kill-its-free-website-monitoring-plan-on-february-6

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In late 1966, a 29-year-old computer scientist drew a series of abstract figures on tracing paper and a quadrille pad. Some resembled a game of cat’s cradle; others looked like heavenly constellations; still others like dress patterns. Those curious drawings were the earliest topological maps of what we now know as the internet. The doodler, Lawrence G. Roberts, died on Dec. 26 at his home in Redwood City, Calif. He was 81.

The New York Times: The cause was a heart attack, said his son Pasha. As a manager at the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, Dr. Roberts designed much of the Arpanet — the internet’s precursor — and oversaw its implementation in 1969. Dr. Roberts called upon a circle of colleagues who shared his interest in computer networking for help in creating the technical underpinnings of the Arpanet, integrating and refining many ideas for how data should flow.

Original URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/xuMAlQJf8xk/lawrence-roberts-who-helped-design-internets-precursor-dies-at-81

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Tim Berners-Lee, writing for The New York Times: All technologies come with risks. We drive cars despite the possibility of serious accidents. We take prescription drugs despite the danger of abuse and addiction. We build safeguards into new innovations so we can manage the risks while benefiting from the opportunities. The web is a global platform — its challenges stretch across borders and cultures. Just as the web was built by millions of people collaborating around the world, its future relies on our collective ability to make it a better tool for everyone.

As we forge the web of tomorrow, we need a set of guiding principles that can define the kind of web we want. Identifying these will not be easy — any agreement that covers a diverse group of countries, cultures and interests will never be. But I believe it’s possible to develop a set of basic ideals

Original URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/inXY1_Z-0-o/as-we-forge-the-web-of-tomorrow-we-need-a-set-of-guiding-principles-that-can-define-the-kind-of-web-we-want-says-tim-berners-lee

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“The HTTP-over-QUIC experimental protocol will be renamed to HTTP/3 and is expected to become the third official version of the HTTP protocol, officials at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have revealed,” writes Catalin Cimpanu via ZDNet. “This will become the second Google-developed experimental technology to become an official HTTP protocol upgrade after Google’s SPDY technology became the base of HTTP/2.” From the report: HTTP-over-QUIC is a rewrite of the HTTP protocol that uses Google’s QUIC instead of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as its base technology. QUIC stands for “Quick UDP Internet Connections” and is, itself, Google’s attempt at rewriting the TCP protocol as an improved technology that combines HTTP/2, TCP, UDP, and TLS (for encryption), among many other things. Google wants QUIC to slowly replace both TCP and UDP as the new protocol of choice for moving binary data across the Internet, and for good reasons, as test have

Original URL: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/WQgp3yXb_nE/the-next-version-of-http-wont-be-using-tcp

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Here’s a bit of breaking news about Comcast, the cable and broadband Internet giant. The company is working on a streaming platform for its Internet broadband customers that will deliver an experience similar to its X1 cable service, without the need to subscribe to cable.
The new device will allow customers to utilize apps such as Netflix, Amazon prime and YouTube but it will not have an app store per se. It’s not yet known what the app selection will be.
Interestingly, this is one way Comcast will be able to deliver 4K, HDR and 3D immersive sound to its customers. I can’t say how, but I’ve seen this system in and it is real.
Another aspect of the new platform is that Comcast sees it as a gateway to the connected home and IoT “Internet of Things” connectivity. The demo I witnessed at the headquarters included emulation of one will be like

Original URL: https://www.avsforum.com/comcast-working-video-streaming-box-broadband-customers/

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The Chrome web browser was starting to get some bad press after problems with extensions and then concerns over automatic sign-ins. Google listened to the complaints and promised to do something about it — the result is Chrome 70. But Chrome 70 is about more than just security and privacy changes. Google has also used this released to introduce a handful of new features. One of the best is picture-in-picture mode (PiP) which lets you keep watching a video in an overlay while you continue to browse other sites. Here’s how to use it. See also: Chrome 70 introduces more… [Continue Reading]

Original URL: https://betanews.com/2018/10/20/chrome-picture-in-picture/

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Progressive web apps just got real.Though progressive web apps, or PWAs, have been around for about three years — an initiative mostly driven by Google — they got real this week when Google released Chrome 70.[ Further reading: Google’s Chromium browser explained ]The new version of Google’s web browser comes with a robust roster of new features. But the biggest news is new support for PWAs that work with desktop Windows. (Mac and Linux support should appear in Chrome 72.)To read this article in full, please click here

Original URL: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3314746/mobile-apps/why-microsoft-and-google-love-progressive-web-apps.html#tk.rss_all